


No Secrets

by sashawiremarryme



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Jupeter Reunion, Other, i do not have good timing, some violence, written pre man of the future part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-10-20 11:45:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17621783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashawiremarryme/pseuds/sashawiremarryme
Summary: All Juno Steel wanted was a quiet night. But a surprise visitor had other ideas. Nothing good ever comes from unexpected guests, especially when they break into your apartment in the middle of the night. And this guest is no exception. He offers Juno a choice. Either break a few laws, stop a man for going to prison for a crime he didn't commit and make amends for past mistakes, or lose the man he loves again. Did he ever really have a choice?





	1. Chapter 1

When you live in a city like Hyperion, you meet a lot of different types of people. Some of them are fine, just normal people going about their lives, or as normal as you can get, I suppose. But you also meet a lot more interesting people. Some people, you're pretty sure they want to kill you, other people, you're pretty sure want to do… other things to you. Most of the time, you don't even know what category they're going to fall into until it's too late. And worse still, sometimes the same person can be both of those things depending on what day it is. Some days you'll be sure they're going to kill you, other days you'll know that they love you. Some days you'll be calling the police on them, other days you'll be committing the crime. Some days they'll leave, other days… you will.

My name's Juno Steel, I'm a private eye which means I tend to meet a lot of people that fall into the 'you're pretty sure they want to kill you' category. It's an occupational hazard. Some people have to worry about paper cuts and back pain from their job. I have to worry about getting beaten up in a back alley by some thug with delusions of grandeur… and paper cuts and back pain, there are a quite a few ways a private eye can get injured. I usually try not to think about it.

One of the advantages of a dangerous job is that your instincts get really good—either that or they were always good and anyone with bad ones didn't make it very far. My point is, you learn to trust your gut. And right now? My gut was telling me that it was a really bad idea to open my office door. Rita was out. Without me here to make her stay the full day she had probably left during the commercials of one of her shows. Normally I'd be pretty annoyed about this, but honestly, I was just happy that she wasn’t in the building. Something about the room just felt wrong. It felt as though someone had been through the place, touching everything and putting it back, carefully making sure that everything was placed exactly where it had been found. But it felt too perfect, too precise. Even though the contents of Rita's desk looked as messy and scattered as they always did, I could tell they were deliberate. I drew my blaster and advanced towards the door, slowly, quietly. Then I kicked open the door and scanned the room.

It was empty.

Everything still felt wrong. I walked over to my desk and checked the files. Nothing was obviously missing. What had the intruder been looking for? There was no doubt in my mind that someone had been in here, but why? What did they want? Eventually, there's only one place left to search, the safe.

Like the rest of the room, nothing had been moved. I probably would have been disappointed if the safe was the exception to this thorough and bizarre search. But no, whoever did this knew what they were doing, I just didn’t know why they were doing it. My instincts were telling me that this person didn’t want me dead. If they did they probably would have done something more intimidating than this. But my instincts had been wrong before.

I tried to go back to work and not think about it. Maybe it was just another PI, who wanted to steal my notes. That had happened a couple times before, early in my career. Then I had found out about Rita's notetaking method and the problem had disappeared overnight. And if it was something more sinister than that? I would find out soon enough anyway.

Eventually, I gave up. I had too many thoughts spinning around in my head, vying for my attention. All I had managed to do in the past hour was staple a few pages together. I'd had less productive hours. I put on my coat and make sure my blaster is easy to reach, just in case.

The walk home was uneventful, even if I did jump at every sound coming from every back alley. In a city like Hyperion, that meant I was jumping a lot. I managed to get home without giving myself a heart attack and trudged upstairs. This building is decades old. Every step is echoed and amplified by a design that was fashionable before I was born. That was actually why I lived here. It was impossible to sneak up on anyone in this stairwell.

When I reached my apartment that same sense of dread washed over me. My instincts were screaming at me to not go through that door. Once again, I drew my blaster, curiosity overriding common sense, and unlocked the door, painfully aware that the sound of my key would be enough to alert anyone who was waiting for me that I was standing on the other side. I moved slightly, so I wasn't standing in front of the door, just in case someone fired a shot through it and waited. The only advantage I had was that I was the one deciding when that door was going to be opened. I would be ready.

After a pause, I slammed the door open and waved my blaster around the room. Again, nothing. I searched my apartment. Going through every room, every closet, every place a human being could possibly hide in. Again, nothing. 

I poured myself a drink and chalked the whole thing up to paranoia. I was investigating another mob boss, and I'd been waiting for them to send some goon after me for weeks. I assumed it was just a combination of stress and lack of sleep that was causing me to think like this. I took a swing.

"That was quite an ent—" I cut off the voice with the sound my coughing as I choked on my drink. The whiskey burned my throat as it came back up.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" I sputtered. I look over and see Peter Nureyev leaning against my window. Like so many things today, he seemed wrong. In the past, if he made me choke on my drink like that he would have reacted. He would have laughed, or made sure I was okay, depending on which mask he was wearing that day. But he didn't even look at me. He face was angled down at the floor and he just looked tired. "Nureyev?"

He perked up at the sound of his name and I watched as he adopted the mask he was wearing today. "Apologies for surprising you, I assumed you knew I was here." He gave a smile so forced even I could tell it was fake.

I poured myself another drink, then drank it and poured another. The entire time he watched me. He must have seen how close I had to hold the bottle to the glass to stop myself from spilling it. "You want one?" I muttered, unsure what I was meant to say here. I resolved to make this drink last, I didn't trust myself to get drunk when he was here.

"No," he said, quietly, still watching me, "I don't believe that would be wise."

We stayed that way for a while, silent, with me refusing to meet his eye. I got the sense he was waiting for me to speak, I just didn't know what he expected me to say. I didn't even know what I expected me to say. I've had months to plan this meeting, think of the perfect string of sentences to explain myself, but those words had always escaped me. I still couldn't bring myself to look at him. It was that night all over again. If I looked at him, I wouldn't be able to help myself. Everything I wanted to say to him but never had the guts to would come pouring out.

"What are you doing here?" The longer the silence dragged on, the more likely it became that I was going to say something I was going to regret. I looked up and saw him close his eyes tilt his head back. He took a slow breath.

"I need your help." He moved his head back and looked me in the eye. He looked exhausted, as though he hadn't slept since the last time I saw him.

"What?"

"I need your help," he repeated, "tomorrow night, somebody is going to discover that they've been robbed. The police will investigate and all of the evidence will point at me."

"So, just disappear like you always do."

"I can't, not this time." He stood up and walked towards me. "No matter where I run, they'll be able to find me. I have to stop this before it comes to that."

"I'm not going to help you get away with a crime, if you didn't want to get caught you shouldn't have left so much evidence behind." I nearly yelled. It was one thing to help him commit a crime to save Mars, but he should have known I would never do this. I wasn't like him. It was my job to stop people like him.

"Juno, you don't understand," he leaned close to me, close enough that I could smell that cologne that I'd never quite been able to forget. "I didn't commit this crime."

I looked down at the drink in my hand. Any thoughts I had of savouring it vanished as I realised I was in for a long night. I threw back the rest of it and poured another. "Are you sure you don't want one?" He winced as he watched me. "It sounds like you might need it." He shook his head. I grabbed the rest of the bottle and walked over to my couch. "What the hell happened?"

"Someone framed me." He sat down next to me.

"You seriously think I believe that?" I scoffed.

"Yes, I think you do." I didn’t acknowledge that. "Yesterday I received a message, threatening me. They were very explicit about what was going to happen, how they were going to make sure I couldn't escape this time.”

"Why did you come here? To me?" He stood up and walked towards the window.

"Believe me, I wouldn't have come here if I didn't have to. I swore I would never see you again if that's what you wanted, I don't generally make a habit of going against my word. Not when I meant what I said." He leaned against the windowsill and looked out over Hyperion. "I believe I once told you that I have very few allies on Mars, let alone allies that can assist me with this.”

“Why not? Just break in there and take the fake evidence. I thought you were meant to be good at stealing.”

“I don’t know how they’re going to frame me, even if I saw the crime scene, I wouldn’t know what to look for. You do, I need you to break into the vault with me, figure out how they’re going to implicate me, and remove the fraudulent evidence.” He turned back towards me and smiled. “Shouldn’t be too hard, we’ve certainly managed to do far more impossible things than that.” Even though I knew that confidence was nothing more than a facade, it was convincing. I really believed that we could do it, we could clear his name.

We spent hours going over our plans for tomorrow night. Nureyev explained that we were breaking into a vault at an auction house, the item he had been framed for stealing was the prize piece of the collection being sold, stored separately from the others. No-one would notice it was gone until somebody went to retrieve it at the end of the night. That was our deadline.

We worked well together. He was creating more and more elaborate plans and backup plans, preparing for every possible contingency, while I questioned him, building a case. Still, I couldn’t ignore the tension between us. Every time I asked him a question I would be on edge, waiting for him to turn around and start questioning me about what had happened that night. I didn’t want to talk about it, but this was worse. I kept waiting for him to snap, yelled at me, demand an explanation, anything. But he never did. It was as though it never happened. 

"Do you know who sent it?" I asked, reading over the message for what must have been the hundredth time, hoping that some new clue would reveal itself.

"Ah, yes, if you look closely you might notice how they didn’t sign their name.” He barely looked up from the map he’d been studying for the last thirty minutes.

“Still, you must have some idea.” I paced the room, trying to think. “An old mark, a former client,” he still wasn’t looking, I just wanted it to be over, I was sick of the anxiety that came with waiting for an explosion, “a jilted lover…” That got his attention. His head snapped up and for a moment a saw something flash across his face (anger? annoyance?) before his mask returned and a bemused smile crossed his face. “I’m just saying in cases like these there are usually one or two obvious suspects, and the person who you left in the middle of the night is usually one of them.”

“Believe it or not, detective,” his eyes followed me as I walked, “I don’t make a habit of leaving a trail of unresolved broken hearts behind me. And if I did, I would at least have the courtesy to leave a note before I disappeared.” 

“Aren’t you a gentleman,” I muttered, waiting for him to start tearing me to pieces, he’d definitely earned it.

“Indeed, but to get back to the topic at hand, I can’t think of anyone. Whoever made that threat knew who I was. They knew everything.” He paused, giving what he just said time to sink in.

“You don’t mean—”

“They know my name,” he answered before I even had the chance to finish the question, “I’m sure you can understand why I’ve been a bit tense the past few hours.”

“Yeah,” how did they find out his name? “Surely that nails it down though. How many people could you have pissed off that also could also work out who you are?”

“Unfortunately, the type of people who have reason to get angry at me are also the type of people with the resources to track me down. Until now, I’d been careful enough that that had never happened. I erased all evidence of my identity when I left Brahma. That’s why no-one’s been able to find out my name since then. It’s impossible, the documents don’t exist. At least, that’s what I thought.”

“You must have missed something.”

“That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

We continued like that for a few more hours. It wasn’t until late that I realised that he had never mentioned where he was staying.

“Hey, Nureyev?” I hesitated.

“Hmm?” He barely looked up from his work.

“Where are you staying tonight?” He jerked up at the question. 

“Don’t worry,” he smiled, sadly, “there are plenty of hotels around here that will accept a guest at three in the morning, no questions asked. Why? Are you hinting that I should leave?”

“No,” I said a little bit too fast, “I just wanted to know if you were planning on sleeping on my couch or something.” 

“No, I wasn’t planning on staying here,” he reassured me, “I understand if you don’t want me around for longer than absolutely necessary.”

“That’s not what I—”

“I should probably leave now anyway,” he stood up, “tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

“You don’t have to leave,” I said before I even realised what I was doing. “If someone’s after you, you probably shouldn’t walk about this city in the middle of the night. I learnt that lesson the hard way.” It was a bad justification and he saw straight through it. He could take care of himself, and my apartment wasn’t exactly safe either.

“Well,” he gave a confused smile, “if that’s what you think is best, in your professional opinion.” 

“Yeah,” I tried to pretend that I had asked him for the sake of professionalism, not because I didn’t want him to leave, “I’ve dealt with threats before, and walking into dark alleys isn’t usually the best course of action.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

I immediately regretted asking him to stay. My couch wasn’t exactly the most comfortable bed in Hyperion City.

I didn’t sleep much that night. I got maybe an hour or two. But I was too distracted thinking about the man asleep in the next room. Part of me wanted to go out there, see if he’d left yet. There was no reason for him to stay, he knew that. He could take care of himself. But I didn’t. I didn’t go out there. Instead, I just tried to bury the thought of him out there with the final glass of whiskey I had brought to bed with me.

I remember him watching me pour it. I had to pour it when the bottle actually touching the glass, still not used to how my world kept shifting every time I gained or lost my right eye. He looked at me, he didn’t even bother to disguise the pity on his face when he commented on how big a glass I had poured. I just grunted in response, letting him believe that my drinking had gotten worse since he last saw me than explain that the bigger the glasses were, the less often I had to pour them. He deserved one less thing on his conscious. I stopped drinking when I realised that it was just making my thoughts circle back to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyone want to hear a fun hypothetical situation?  
> writing an over 21k reunion fic that you planned on starting to release on friday and on the tuesday before the characters are canonically reunited
> 
> ... hypothetically speaking


	2. Chapter 2

The next day I left my bedroom, convinced that the events of last night had just been a dream. Or that they were real but Peter had realised that there were plenty of people in this city who could help him a lot more than I could. But when I opened my bedroom door, he was still there, asleep on my couch. I gathered my things as quietly as I could, trying not to wake him. Maybe if I had been a bit faster, I could have avoided talking to him at all this morning.

“I hope you’re not sneaking out, detective,” I heard rustling on the couch behind me as I reached for the door, “you seem to be making a habit of that.”

“Yeah,” I coughed, forcing myself to stop talking. I wasn't sure if I was about to make a joke or break down and apologise for what I did. Either way, it wasn't the right thing to say right now. “I'm coming back,” I eventually blurted out, trying to fill the silence that had become a common feature of our conversations. “I'm just going to work.” I reached for the door again. “I'll see you later,” I muttered as a weak reassurance before walking out, closing the door behind me before he could respond.

I couldn't focus again that day. I couldn't even manage to care about Rita not being in the office yesterday—or that she was watching streams all day today. I kept thinking about Nureyev. I could practically see him in my apartment, checking his plans, trying to work out who framed him, waiting for me to get back. Would he still be there when I got back? Or would he realise that he didn't need me?

“Boss!” A yell dragged me out of my thoughts, moments before a scrunched up ball of paper hit me in the face. I looked up to see Rita standing in the doorway, her arms crossed.

“What?” I unfurled the ball of paper, in case it contained a clue that would tell me what she wanted. Nope, it was a drawing of a duck.

“What’s up,” she smiled and used my acknowledgment of her as an excuse to enter the room. She pulled out the chair on the other side of my desk that was usually reserved for clients that insisted on meeting me in person. She sat down and folded her arms on my desk.

“Don’t you have work to do?” I grumbled, but I knew that she probably wasn’t going to leave until she got the answer that she wanted—or I yelled at her, but I wasn’t going to punish her for my unexpected visitor.

“Yeah, I’ll do that later,” she waved her hand, dismissing my question. “I just want to know why you’re in such a good mood.”

“What do you mean I’m in a good mood?” I wasn’t happy, I was annoyed, what did I have to be happy about?

“Well…”

“Rita!”

“You have been smiling to yourself all day,” she explained, “and you don’t exactly do that a lot, boss.” I really hoped that I hadn’t been smiling every time that I had thought him today.

“Rita,” I tried to keep my voice calm, emotionless, “do your actual job.”

“Okay,” she stood up, “or I could just hack into all of the security cameras that you’ve walked past since the last time I saw you and figure out what happened to make you so happy.” Would Nureyev appear on those cameras? She saw Rex Glass, she might recognise him. And she definitely could access those cameras. Nureyev better hope that he’s as good at avoiding cameras as he thinks he is. “And I could check the ones in your apartment but wouldn’t really be hacking because I set those up.”

“I thought I told you to get rid of those?” Rita had set them up years ago, she said she was worried that someone would come to my apartment in the middle of the night and try to kill me, but I think she mainly used them to see when I left for work every morning. She didn’t tell me about them at first, and after I found out I told her to take them down. If they were still there… Nureyev was definitely on them. 

“Huh, you were serious about that?”

“Why would I joke about that? Asking you to not invade my privacy isn’t a funny topic.” I had to stop her from looking at those recordings. The last thing Nureyev needed was another person knowing where he was. And the last thing I needed was Rita asking why that Dark Matters agent I worked with once was in my apartment.

“Listen, Rita,” I couldn’t tell her the truth, but I didn’t really want to lie to her. I’d already kept enough secrets from her. “Last night, somebody came over, someone that I hadn’t seen in a while.”

“Like an old friend?”

“Yeah, something like that.” I shoved the thoughts of Nureyev that had forced their way into my head. I didn’t need to think about his kiss right now. “He doesn’t come to Mars that often, and I was happy to see them. But he really doesn’t like to be filmed or recorded so I need you to delete that footage you got from last night—and also the rest of it, I still don’t understand why and how you set up those cameras, but please stop.” 

“Oh, is he like a super spy or something, and he can’t let anyone know his true identity because it’s his only weakness but he told you the truth about him because he loves you?” She smiled. 

“If I say yes, will you delete that footage?” She nodded. “You are absolutely right. Will you delete it now?”

“Okay boss,” she smiled, “you’re being serious this time, right?”

“I was being serious the first time.” She got up and walked over to her desk. I followed her to watched her delete last night’s footage.

“Huh, that’s weird,” she looked at me, “there isn’t anything from last night, someone must have turned off the cameras.” She gasped. “He really is a super spy.” 

“Yeah, he’s really something…” I’d searched for those cameras for months before I finally gave up. How did he find them so quickly? He shouldn’t have even known they were there.

“So, how long is he staying?” Rita was still staring at her screen, mouth agape. Maybe she wanted advice for how to hide her cameras better. Wow, I’m so happy that these two haven’t properly met, then my life really would be hell.

“I’m not sure.” I realised that Nureyev hadn’t said anything about his plans for after this, maybe he didn’t have any. It’s probably hard to make plans for the future when you don’t know if you’ll even have one. “He’s in town for business, if it goes well, I’m assuming that he’ll leave either tonight or early tomorrow.” I doubt he’d bother saying goodbye to me, not when he had the chance to return the favour for what I did to him all those months ago.

“So,” she turned in her chair to face me, “let me get this straight. You have some mysterious guy from your past, that you hardly ever see, who is leaving in less than a day, and you’re here, at work, and not with him.”

“I have work to do, Rita.” I stepped away from her and moved back towards my office. Somehow, she managed to get between me and the door. 

“Work that you’re not even doing because you’re too busy thinking about your mystery guy.”

“Rita.” I tried to step around her. She blocked me.

“No, nope, you’re not working today.” She grabbed my wrist and dragged me towards to door to our office. I tried to break her grip, but she was a lot stronger than she looked. “You are going to go find this guy and talk to him.” She pushed me out the door and closed it, leaving me alone in the hallway.

“Rita,” I banged on the door, “let me in.” I heard a familiar click as she locked the door. “This isn’t funny.”

“Have fun boss!” Rita yelled through the door.

“Unbelievable,” I grumbled as I stepped away from the door. I walked through the dark, twisting hallways that formed the path between my office and the outside world. I flinched as I stepped out into the daylight, the dome covering Hyperion doing little to filter the bright light that struck the planet this time of day. I wandered the streets of this city, trying to kill time. I didn’t want to come back to my apartment to find Nureyev there. Last night wasn’t easy, spending that much time with him. But, It would be worse to get home and not find him. I didn’t want to sit in that room alone, searching the room for signs of trouble, wondering if he’d come back, wondering if been there at all.

I wanted to stop and get a drink, but I had promised him that I wouldn’t drink, even when we got to the party. We agreed that it probably isn’t a good idea to have an intoxicated investigator trying to find the implicating evidence. And Nureyev was one of the few people I would be willing to stay sober at this party for. That didn’t mean I wasn’t tempted to go back on my word. But I couldn’t, no matter how badly I wanted to. Rita hadn’t given me the chance to grab my things before she threw me out of my office. No money, no drinks.

Pretty soon, I ran out of ways to distract myself without my wallet. Pilot Park is nice and all but you can only spend so long looking at the statute of a former mayor who you watched die before you start to feel a little nauseous. And inevitably, my mind kept wandering back to my apartment anyway. 

So I went back. I went through the same door and walked up the same steps that I do nearly every day. Nothing seemed different or out of place. Everything seemed normal.

Until I opened my door and Peter Nureyev was still in there, sitting on my living room floor.

“Juno,” he sounded surprised, “you’re back early.” He looked up from the floorplans he was looking at. As he gathered the papers strewn about my floor, I tried not to notice that he was only wearing his underwear, tried not to see the scars that covered his body, tried not to remember those nights in Miasma’s tomb where we had traded stories behind our scars. Some of them had dramatic stories involving near-death experiences and intense escapes. Others didn’t have stories, they were from so long ago that we didn’t know the causes, only the permanent reminder they left behind.

“I had a light day,” I walked over to the fridge to see if it had any food left in it. Finding nothing, I settled for a glass of water. “That’s a nice outfit, you wearing it to the party tonight?”

“I probably won’t wear it to the auction,” he laughed, “but I might wear it later tonight.” I didn’t react, it wasn’t the best pickup line I’d heard from him. “I had a shower but I didn’t want to put the suit on yet in case I creased it,” he explained. He nodded towards two garment bags hanging on the door to my bedroom. I hadn’t noticed them when I first came in.

“You bought me clothes, again.” 

“I wasn’t planning to,” he picked up a folder and walked towards the kitchen. I turned towards him. “But you didn’t really have anything fitting for a lady of your calibre.” He handed me the folder. 

“What’s that supposed to—” I opened the folder to see several forms of ID. All with my photo and the name Taavi Varro. “Is that really the best photo of me you could get?”

“I was going to use the photo on your actual ID, then I saw it and assumed you would want a different one.”

“No-one has a nice photo for their ID.” I shouldn’t have to justify my awful photo, I’m pretty sure the cameras they use are designed to make you as ugly as possible. “But surely someone as rich as Taavi probably is should be able to bribe the government into using a nicer photo.” I looked back down at the photo. “Where did you get this from, anyway?”

“From your secretary, she has all these pictures of you looking confused in your apartment saved, I’m assuming you were looking for the cameras.”

“Did everybody know about that except for me?”

“And here’s my name,” he showed me another ID. It had his photo, and the name Malaime Varro.

“Nureyev, are you making us play a married couple again?” I did not want to do this. Especially since it had gone so well last time.

“I already had the invitation for me, it was easier just add you as my husband than to try and find a second last-minute invitation to one of the most exclusive events on Hyperion.” I put the ID back down on the counter. Just because he had a point, didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. “Well, since you’re here, you might as well go over the plans again. I want to make sure you’re ready for tonight.”

“Nureyev, you spent so long teaching my those plans last night they made their way into my dreams. It’ll be fine.” I reassured him. “And if it’s not, that’s what you’re there for.”

“You have too much faith in me, Juno.” But I was already walking away. I walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind. Honestly, I hadn’t slept much last night. I could pretend that I was just nervous about tonight, but even I know that that’s not entirely true.

I collapsed, face-down, on my bed. I pushed my face into the sheets that smelled distinctly of me. The rest of my apartment had been taken over by that cologne. Had he been spraying it around my apartment while I was out? Before I could think of an answer to that question, exhaustion overtook me and I fell asleep, hoping that I wouldn’t dream about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of the comments on the last chapter!!  
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Between writing Rita and choosing some Nureyev aliases I had a lot of fun writing it :)


	3. Chapter 3

I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Juno, wake up.” I rolled over to look up at Nureyev’s face. “You should probably get ready, now.” 

“How long was I asleep?” I responded, groggily. But he had already walked back into the other room. I walked into the bathroom and had a shower. I couldn’t help but notice that Nureyev had replaced everything in my bathroom with soaps that looked far too expensive for my taste. 

When I stepped out of the bathroom I immediately saw the dress lying on my bed. It was short and black. The skirt flared out at the bottom. It was perfect to hide the garter that Nureyev had modified for me and the blaster that was attached to it. The dress fit perfectly, as did the heels that were strapped to my feet securely enough that they wouldn’t fall off if I needed to run.

When I stepped out of my bedroom, Nureyev was waiting for we. He looked up as I entered and a smiled briefly crossed his face before it disappeared. It was replaced by an expression that I didn’t recognise. He looked away to grab the folder with the IDs we needed to get into the auction. He didn’t look at me when he handed me mine. “You look nice.”

“Thanks,” I said awkwardly, “so do you.” It was true, he did. He was wearing a white suit and what looked like several kilos worth of jewellery. I half expected him to start jangling when he moved.

We didn’t say anything else to each other as we made our last minute preparations and walked out to the car Nureyev had gotten for us. During the drive there, I sat as far away from him as I could. I had to spend the rest of the night by his side, I wanted a last few moments of space.

As soon we arrived at the auction, the tension and anxiety that had been building all day became impossible to ignore. The knot in my stomach was physically painful. I considered telling Nureyev that I wasn't feeling well. He would just have to do this without me. But when we approached the guards at the door and handed them our invitation, I realised it was too late to back out. 

Nureyev handed the guard his invitation and our IDs. We had practised this. He had told me that the secret to any successful lie is confidence. He spoke to the guards, answering their questions without hesitation and with the attitude of someone who thought dealing with security was below him. I just looked down at my nails, trying my best to look disinterested. While I pretended to stare at the non-existent dirt trapped under my nails, I watched the exchange Nureyev and security out of the corner of my eye. The guards stared at Nureyev's invitation for a long time. For a moment I hoped that they would realise it was a fake. It's not that I wanted Nureyev to get arrested, but I couldn't help but remember what happened last time I helped him with something like this. Eventually, the guards nodded and handed Nureyev his papers back. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me into the building. His arm was too tight. Luckily he was wearing a suit, but it wasn't hard to imagine how tense his arm was underneath his sleeve.

I tried to whisper something in his ear, but even with the heels I was wearing, he was still too tall for me to reach. Luckily he noticed what I was trying to do and leaned down so I could reach his ear. 

“It's going to be fine,” I tried to reassure him, “we're inside, the hardest part is already over.” 

“Detective,” he muttered, confused, as the grip on my waist loosened, “if you think that was the hardest part—”

“I know that,” I pulled away slightly, ‘I just thought that one of us should, I don’t know, be positive,” I muttered as his hand left my waist completely.

“Isn’t that usually my job?” He asked, smiling and raising an eyebrow. It took me a moment to respond. He just reminded me so much of what he used to be like. 

“Well, you’ve been doing a pretty bad job at it so I thought I might as well try it out.” I smiled back at him.

“Ah, yes,” he looked away from me, “I suppose I haven’t been doing a very good job at that,” he admitted, as though he had only just realised how different he’d been acting since he came back. He stepped closer to me and grabbed my hand. “This way darling,” he pulled me towards the bar, “the cocktails here are divine.” He looked around the room as he ordered me a drink. 

After I got my drink, he’d managed to find a non-alcoholic one, of course, he grabbed my arm, nearly causing it to spill. “Darling, I’ll be right back. I think I just saw Isaac and I haven’t spoken to zir in the longest time.” He said, mainly for the bartender’s benefit. He walked away, chasing after a person that didn’t exist, just so he would have an excuse to search the room without me slowing him down.

I leaned against the bar, pretending to watch him leave as I did my own investigation. In the far corner of the room, there was a stage and podium, as far from the entrance and the rest of the party as it could get. It was easily ignored, as though nobody actually cared about the auction, like it was just an excuse for the city’s richest to go out, get drunk, and talk about how much better they were than the rest of us. The placement of the bar supported this theory. It was in the middle of the room, circular, accessible from all sides, easy for anyone to get a drink, regardless of where they were. I glanced across the room again, this time looking at the other guests. My eye settled on a familiar face and I turn to face the bar before they could notice me. I picked up my drink and walked to the other side of the bar, trying to put as much distance as I could between us but stay somewhere Nureyev could find me quickly. I looked back, they were gone. I tried to stay calm as I searched the room for them, but I couldn’t see them anywhere.

“Is something wrong, dear?” Nureyev appeared at my side.

“Yeah,” I said, not looking at him as I continued to scan the faces of the other guests, “we might have a slight problem.”

“What sort of—”

“STEEL!” Nureyev was cut off by a grunt from behind me. Nureyev looked behind me and I turned to face the voice. “I should have known you were going to be here. I could smell trouble a mile away, I’m like a dog, a dog that can smell trouble.” Omar Khan stood directly in front of me, too close, far, far too close. I could smell his cologne and I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eyes. It was like talking to Nureyev. At least Nureyev had half-decent cologne.

“You don’t look like a dog, where are your other three ears?”

“It was a metaphor, or a simile, I don’t know, but you know what I meant.”

“I apologise for my partner,” Nureyev said as I opened my mouth. Khan looked at him as though he only just noticed him. “He’s just upset I forced him to come here.” He smiled.

“Forced him to…” Khan looked between me and Nureyev. “Damnit Steel, did you get kidnapped again?”

“You say that as though it’s my fault.”

“I’m just saying, it happens a lot. We had to stop including crimes against you in the official statistics. You were too much of an outlier, you were inflating the figures.”

“Ahem,” Nureyev interrupted us again, “I assure you, I didn’t kidnap him. I would never do something like that.” I’m not entirely sure how Nureyev managed to keep a straight face during that last part.

“He’s telling the truth,” I sighed, “he didn’t kidnap me. He’s my… husband.”

Khan looked Nureyev up and down before leaning close to me. “You’re punching above your weight, Steel,” he said in a voice that was probably meant to be a whisper, it was quieter than his normal speaking voice, but it was definitely loud enough for Nureyev—and anyone else in a twenty-metre radius—to hear.

“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” Nureyev extended a hand towards Khan, “Malaime, Malaime Varro,” he introduced himself.

Khan hesitantly shook his hand. “Captain Omar Khan, of the HCPD.”

“He’s the captain of my old precinct,” I explained. 

“Oh, so you two used to work together?” Nureyev asked innocently.

“You could say that,” I scoffed.

“I joined right after Steel left,” he glared at me, “but, yes, I have worked with him before.”

“Well,” Nureyev said cheerfully. Either he didn’t notice the tension between me and Khan or he was doing an incredible job of hiding it. “It is wonderful to meet you, Captain, but I can’t help but wonder why a person as busy as you must be, dropped everything to come to a little party like this.” 

“I’m working,” he muttered, “I got a tip about something going on here tonight. I’m just having a look.”

“What tip? What’s going to happen?” Surely this was about us.

“Yeah, like I’m going to tell you, Steel. For all I know, you’re the one who’s about to—” Khan stopped himself.

“Forgive my husband,” Khan turned to look at Nureyev, “you know how curious Juno can be. It makes him nearly impossible to surprise.” He shot Khan a disarming grin and Khan seemed to soften a bit. I assumed that this was one of those times I should just stay quiet and let him do the talking. “But,” Nureyev nervously looked around the room, “we’re not in danger, are we?” It took a lot of restraint to not at least smile at Nureyev’s attempt at a concerned citizen. I knew him too well to be convinced. But it seemed to work on Khan.

“Err, no sir, nothing like that.”

Nureyev grabbed Khan’s arm. “So, we’re not about to be robbed at gunpoint, are we?”

“No, it’s a robbery in the vaults, it shouldn’t affect you out here.” Okay, that was almost definitely about us.

“Oh, thank you,” he let go of his arm, “I feel make safer now. Especially if a person as important as you are is on the case.” The flattery made Khan uncomfortable. I guess he wasn’t used to it. Back when I was still a cop, the public just complained most of the time. Some things don’t change that much in fifteen years. 

“It was nice meeting you,” Khan stepped away and smiled at Nureyev before turning to me. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Steel. If you even think about acting up, I’ll arrest you and make your partner wait at least two days before he can bail you out. I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying about what you’re up to this week.”

“Maybe I’m just here to buy some overpriced junk, no annoying plan to get on your nerves.” He stared at me. We both knew I didn’t have enough creds to pay my bills half the time, let alone enough to buy a cup you can’t even drink out of because of the amount of lead in the paint. But he had already walked away from us. I let out a sigh of relief.

“That was about us wasn’t it?” I asked Nureyev.

“That seems likely.”

“That’s not good, is it?” He shook his head slowly.

“It’s not great,” he was watching Khan walk away, “but it could be worse. I don’t think he suspects you at all.” 

“You’re right,” I crossed my arms, “he’s going to watch me all night because he thinks I’m innocent and wants to be an eyewitness in my defence for any crimes I get accused of tonight.” 

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he laughed, “he definitely thinks you’re up to something, and he’s still glaring at you from across the room.” I turned to see Khan, at the edge of the crowd, looking directly at me from across the room. We made eye contact for a few seconds. It was unnerving. “But, Khan knows the security around that vault, and I don’t think he thinks you could break into it.”

“Thanks… dear.” I turned back to him. He grabbed one of my hands and put his other hand around my waist, pulling me closer. I put my hand on his shoulder and we began a waltz that was slow enough that neither of us actually needed to focus on what we were doing. We had other things to worry about. “But, what do we do about Khan? It’s going to be hard to get me into that vault if he’s watching me all night.”

He just laughed. “For your average Hyperion thief, maybe, but you forget, I am very good. And disappearing is my speciality, after all.” He smiled at me and span.

“So how do we disappear?” I asked him as he closed the distance between us. 

“If I tell you it’ll ruin the surprise.”

“No,” I let go of him, “not this time.”

“You’re making a scene.”

“I don’t care,” I look around to make sure no-one is close enough to hear us. “No surprises this time, having a criminal gamble with my life once was enough.”

“You can’t seriously still be annoyed about that,” he scoffed.

“Look,” I stepped towards him, “no more secrets, from either of us, okay?”

“I understand.” He grabbed me again and we continued dancing. “Either we wait until he looks away, and who knows how long that will take, or we find a way to distract him.” He bit his lip as he concentrated.

“Can’t we just wait until there’s a group of people between us and then I just sneak in the back.”

“No, it’s too suspicious, if we do that he’ll assume you’re doing whatever it is he thinks you’re planning, instead of assuming he just lost track of you in the crowd.”

“Okay, why don’t you just go over there and flirt with him again while I get away.”

“Darling, if you think that was flirting I don’t know why I bothered trying so hard when I first met you,” he said loudly as another couple started dancing close enough to hear us. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “most likely, he’ll just start watching me instead, hoping I’ll lead him back to you. I can probably get away, but I’d rather leave that plan as a last resort.”

“So what do we do then?” In response, he spun again, faster this time, and bumped into the couple dancing near us.

“I am so sorry. My husband was right, I really am a terrible dancer,” he laughed, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” the woman he ran into brushed herself off and turned away.

“Wait a moment,” she turned back, “I’m sorry to annoy you, but I saw you at the bar earlier and you disappeared before I got the chance to talk to you. I just wanted to know where you got that necklace you were wearing before. It was beautiful and I’d love to get my partner one like it.”

“You mean this…” she raised her hand to her neck and gasped. “Where is it? Where did it go?”

“It’s missing? I assumed you removed it.” Nureyev looked surprised. “Did it fall off?”

“No,” she yelled in disgust, “I would never buy a necklace that breaks like that!”

“Then how could it have gone missing? Unless,” his eyes widened as though he pretended to have a revelation, “someone took it.” The woman and her partner gasped in unison. “But who? No guest at this party would ever need to steal.” I pressed my lips together, don’t say a word, Steel.

“Maybe none of the guests would,” she hissed, “but the staff might.” She looked at her partner as though she had just solved the mystery. “The bartender, I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him!” She grabbed her partner and they stormed off towards the bar.

We went back to dancing. “So, when someone frames you for a crime, it’s enough to justify actually breaking into the vault you were accused of breaking in to. But when you frame someone for a crime, it’s fine.” I clarified.

“If you want to go over there and clear that bartender’s name, I won’t stop you.” He paused, and when I didn’t respond, he continued. “He’ll be fine, they’ll work out it wasn’t him eventually.”

“And then?”

“I’m sure she can afford to replace the necklace.”

“I meant about us.”

“Oh, we’ll be long gone by then, don’t worry.” 

The woman reached the bar, the bartender didn’t have time to look up before she started screaming at him. Even though we were too far to hear her exact words, we could hear her yelling from here. And Khan definitely heard it. Within seconds he was running over there. Pulling the screaming lady away from the bartender she was now trying to hit over the head with a bottle of wine she had managed to grab.

“Now, Juno,” Nureyev whispered in my ear as he let go of my shoulder and pulled me towards an unmarked door. The crowd didn’t notice us. No doubt they assumed we were a normal couple, taking advantage of the incident to sneak away somewhere more private. And no-one turned around to see which door we went through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so fun fact  
> in this chapter juno makes a comment about a cup that you cant drink out of because of lead in the paint  
> thats based off of a real mug that i own that my sister gave me because it had lead in it (she knows me too well)


	4. Chapter 4

Immediately after we walked through that door, there was another one. This one was actually locked. Nureyev inspected the keypad. He ran his gloved thumb over the company logo in the corner and smiled.

“This wasn’t on the plans.” I leaned against the wall and unclipped my blaster from the garter under my dress. “Your intel was wrong.”

“True,” he was still staring at the keypad, “but that’s a problem for later.”

“I don’t know, Nureyev, given there’s a mysterious locked door that we don’t know how to open, I think it’s a problem for now.” He ignored me and just started punching numbers into the keypad. “What are you doing?” My eye flickered between him and the door we just came through. What if someone saw us?

I heard a clicking sound as the door unlocked and he pulled it open before looking back at me. He still had that stupid grin on his face. “This type of door used to be quite common on Brahma,” he explained as he held the door open for me. “It uses a randomly generated sixteen digit code, and if you get it wrong three times, you’re locked out and just about every alarm in a ten-kilometre radius goes off. They were especially loved by the rich and forgetful, because once you set the code you never have to change it, unlike most doors as strong as this, which require regular password changes.”

“But, how did you get it open?” I asked. “The chances of guessing a sixteen digit code on the first try are—”

“Unimaginably small, yes.” He was still smiling, waiting for me to work it out. “Like I said, popular amongst the rich and forgetful. Clients constantly forget the code, so the company that makes them has their own code that they can use to open the door if needed. To make it easier, they use the same code on every door.”

“So if you know the code, you can open any of their doors.” I finished. “So how do you know that code?”

“Simple, this company specialises in physical security, not cybersecurity. Ma—” he stopped himself, “someone I used to know hacked into their system ages ago and found the code. And I guessed they haven’t changed it in twenty years.”

We reached a corner and he signalled for me to stop. He checked his watch. I knew that there weren't many physical guards wandering the hallways but cameras were everywhere. He’d told me that there was a specific sequence that they were checked in. If we could time it right, we could get through this entire building without a single guard noticing us. I tried memorising the sequence, but I worked out pretty quick that I didn’t have much of a chance of that. I just had to trust Nureyev.

“Are you sure you can hit someone with that?” he whispered and gestured at my blaster. 

“It’s a small hallway, I’ll definitely hit someone with it.” I’d been practising after I got the cybernetic taken out. Even if I didn’t necessarily need the blaster to be a decent detective, it was still nice to have. I wasn’t nearly as good as I was before. But a narrow hall like this? I could do this with my eye closed. 

“Hopefully we won’t need it.” I don’t think I reassured him much. He checked his watch again before signalling for me to follow him around the corner. We ran out into a large room with several more hallways branching off it. Each of those halls had a camera that pointed towards this room. We only had a moment before one of the guards checked those cameras. And I couldn’t run across the room in time. Peter was way out in front of me, he was already a third of the way towards the door to the vault before I had even turned the corner. When he reached the end he nestled himself into a small gap between the giant, protruding vault door and the wall. A space he was certain was a blind spot in the camera’s vision. 

I didn’t reach the end. I threw myself into a supply cupboard that was nearly halfway towards the door. Now I had to wait. Nureyev had told me that the blind spot was only big enough for one of us. He would signal when he got the door open and I should join him. It would take a while. He could only work on the door for about ten seconds at a time: when none of the cameras were watching. The rest of the time he would be crammed into the tiny gap he had found.

I looked around the room I was in. I knew it was for storage but he didn’t say what was in here. It was dark. I waited for my eyes to adjust to pass the time. Eventually, I could see faint outlines against the walls but I couldn’t work out what they were. I turned my comms on. The faint light was almost blinding. But now I could see what was in here. It was a weapons locker. 

Stacked against the wall were about a dozen guns, high-grade rifles. I recognised them from some news stories a few years ago. They were so powerful even Hyperion's mayor at the time admitted that they shouldn't be in civilian hands and restricted them. On a shelf next to them, were chemical weapons, the kind that you could only find on a few planets in the Outer Rim.

I stepped back and faced the door. I didn't want to know what else was in there, or why it was there. It was only then I realised that Nureyev hadn't actually told me anything about the auction. He hadn't even told me what was in the vault. 

I had no way of knowing what was in there, or if he'd actually been framed. For all I knew, he was going to steal whatever was in there, and then call me over to remove the evidence. 

No, that's ridiculous. Nureyev doesn't need my help to rob someone without getting caught. He's been doing that for years. And if he was just bringing me along because he was bored and wanted a challenge then he wouldn't have left me in a storage room while he actually committing the crime. This time, at least, he hadn't given me a reason to not trust him. 

I hear a sharp whistle and I spin back around. Was that one of the bombs, about to detonate. No, I realised, it was Nureyev, that was the signal. It was too late now. If I left the room I wouldn't make it across the room before a guard checked one of the cameras pointed at me. I would have to wait. At least I knew the signal was coming this time. 

When I heard it, I slipped through the door, closing it behind me, and started running. Nureyev was standing by the door of the vault, signalling for me to hurry. I ran through the opening and he closed it behind me. I feel to my knees, taking a few seconds to catch my breath. I never was much of a sprinter. 

“Detective,” Nureyev interrupted my rest, “we're on a schedule.” I looked over to him. He was standing by the door, holding his hands up to the crack between the door and the wall as though he ready to fling it open at a moments notice. 

“You know, this would go faster if you helped,” I panted as I pulled myself to my feet. 

“I can't,” he nodded his head towards the door, “this doesn't open from the inside. It's a security measure, to trap thieves and employees who come in here by themselves. Someone has to hold it open.”

“So, just hold it open with something and help me out.” 

“Juno,” he sounded annoyed, as though he was explaining this to a child, “there are several cameras pointed directly at this door. If it is open by more than a few millimetres, the guards will notice. So I am here, holding it open by less than a few millimetres.”

“Oh, okay,” I nodded while he stared at me, annoyed, “I get it.” I turned my attention to the room we were in. It didn't look like a vault. Even though the room was nearly empty, someone had probably spent more money designing it than it cost to build my apartment building. White walls, gold trim. The carpet was a rich red colour, and judging by how much my foot sank as I took a step towards the centre of the room, it had barely been walked on. In the middle of the room sat a white, chest-high, pedestal. On top of that, a black case. Presumably, it once contained whatever Nureyev was framed for stealing. “There’s nothing here,” I thought aloud, “what evidence is there supposed to be?”

I looked towards the case, it was the only thing in the room I could investigate. I reached out to open it. As soon as I touched the clasp keeping it closed, I felt a sharp pain in my hand. I yelled and stepped backwards in shock, holding my hand close to my chest.

“Juno!” I felt Nureyev’s cool hands cover mine as he pulled my injured hand towards him to inspect it. “You’re burned.”

“Nureyev, the door!” But it was too late, it had already locked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone enjoyed today's episode of 'Really Pete? Really?'


	5. Chapter 5

Nureyev’s eyes flicked towards the door. Now that it was closed, it was practically indistinguishable from the wall.

“It’s closed” He sighed and let go of my hand and sat against the wall, defeated. “I know.”

“Okay, so what’s the plan?”

“There’s no plan,” he admitted, “the plan was not getting locked in this room.”

“Seriously? That’s it? You have ten backup plans for every possible thing that could go wrong, except for this?” I paced the room and pulled out my comms, if anyone could get that door open, it would be Rita. The screen didn’t light up. I hit the side of the device, trying to get it to turn on. “C’mon.”

“Don’t bother, electronics won’t work in here,” he muttered, “as I said, there’s no way out.”

“Really, you’re giving up, you?” He didn’t look at me. “If you knew there was no way out, then why did you run into the room?”

“Because you were hurt.” He said this as though it were obvious.

“That doesn’t seem like a great reason to get us both trapped in here,” I muttered under my breath.

“Juno,” he stood up, “you were in pain, I needed to know that you were okay.”

“Well, this is what happens when you trust people,” I muttered.

He just stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Maybe I betrayed you, maybe that was a trick to get you away from the door. Hell, for all you know I was the one who sold you out. I know your name, don’t I?”

“I’ll admit,” he muttered, “the thought did cross my mind” He paused, as though he was waiting for me to keep yelling at him. “I entertained the idea that you had revealed my secret for one reason or another” He stopped himself again. The man whose life depended on finding the right way to talk to people seemed lost for words. “I didn’t want to believe that you would that, but I wasn’t sure. That’s why I went to your office, I had to know what you were doing, who you had spoken to.”

“Good.” It looked like the idiot had finally learnt his lesson about trusting people, especially me.

“Good?” His composure slipped for a moment, and I heard the anger I had been waiting to hear for the past day creep into his voice. “Juno, you are the first person I’ve trusted in with something that important in twenty years. I trusted you with my life. I didn’t want to believe you would do something like this. I didn’t want to believe that you’d betray me like this… again.”

“You really want to talk about this now?” I’d been giving him opportunities since last night to have this fight and he decided to have it now?

“Why not?” He walked over to me. “I don’t see any way of getting out of here, what else can we do but pass the time. And we might not get the chance to have this conversation once that door opens.”

“What do you want me to say?” I slumped against the wall, defeated.

“The truth would be a good place to start.” He sat down opposite me. “Why did you leave?”

“Because it wasn’t going to work out, you’re a thief and I hunt down thieves.” We’d had this conversation before, he knew I couldn’t ignore what he did for a living.

“Wrong.” He said, bluntly, matter-of-factly.

“Wrong? How can I be wrong? You’re not in my head, Nureyev.”

“I asked you to tell me the truth, please don’t lie to me, Juno. You’re not doing either of us any favours.”

“I was scared,” I tried again, “I’ve never left Mars before, this is my home. I still have things to do here.”

“You’re getting closer but not quite there yet. Try again.”

“What do you want from me?” I jumped to my feet. “Do you want me to say that I was scared that you’d leave me, abandon me on some random planet five solar systems away because you realised that you deserve better? That you’d see a pretty face and then wonder why you would ever bring me along in the first place. That one day you’d stop loving me.” I couldn’t stop. The words that I’d been trying to find for months, to explain what I did, came pouring out. I had about as much chance at guessing what I was going to say next as Peter did. “I love you, and I didn’t want to lose you.”

“So you left first,” Peter said, as though he knew the answer all along and was just waiting for me to say it.

“Yeah, I left, just like you taught me to do.” He closed the remaining distance between us. 

He wrapped his arms around me. All of a sudden I was taken back to when we’d first met, months ago. I didn’t know what this man wanted, but wrapped up in that cologne, I knew I wanted to be with him. “I didn’t want you to leave,” I buried my face in his chest, “The only reason I said I’d leave Mars is because you said I’d never see you again if I didn’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered in my ear.

“Why? I’m the idiot that ruined the only chance at happiness I had.”

“No, you’re not.” He pulled away and put his finger under my chin, tilting my head up to look him in the eyes. “I never should have asked to you leave Mars with me. Not after what I put you through. I’ll never know exactly what you went through in that tomb, or exactly what you saw in my head. But I can’t fault you for doing what any sane person would do, and leaving the man who caused them so much pain.”

“Nureyev… That wasn’t your fault.” Why was he the one apologising? He hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Yes, it was,” he stated bluntly, “All of it was: you being on that train, getting captured by Miasma, what you endured at her hands, your eye.” I resisted the urge to raise my hand to the eyepatch where my eye, and then the cybernetic, once sat. “And for what? We didn’t stop the end of the world, we didn’t even stop the bomb from going off.”

He stepped away from me and sat down against the wall again. “It was never meant to be an ultimatum. When I said that I’d leave and you’d never hear from me again I thought it was what you wanted. I just assumed that, after what I’d put you through, you’d rather I disappeared.”

I sat down next to him and leaned my head against his shoulder. “I missed you.” I didn’t know what to say to him, how to tell him that none of what happened that night was his fault.

“I know, I felt the same.” He rested his head on top of mine. I closed my eye. I didn’t matter what was about to happen, at least I had this final moment with him.

“Are you finished?” We both jerked up in unison as a woman’s voice filled the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's nearly 3am which is the best time to post fanfic (:


	6. Chapter 6

“Hello, hello, I would have said something sooner but I didn’t want to interrupt.” The voice was nervous, but still cheerful. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“Who are you?” I said as I looked around the room for speakers, the mysterious woman’s voice still echoing around the small room.

“Isn’t it obvious?” She laughed. “I’m the one who sent the message.”

“I already worked that much out for myself thanks,” I stood up, still trying to work out where the noise was coming from. “You got a name or do I get to pick one?” 

“What are you doing?” Nureyev hissed at me as he slowly rose to his feet.

“Hmm, Juno was it?” The voice continued. “I’m sorry about all this, I didn’t realise our mutual friend was going to drag you into this.” She sounded nervous. “But this really doesn’t concern you. This is between me and… Pete.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nureyev wince slightly at his name.

“Hmm, is that so?” He started to pace the room. “And may I ask to whom am I speaking? I don’t recognise your voice but you clearly know who I am.”

“I guess when you ruin so many lives they all start to blur together. It must be hard to remember a specific one.” She paused. Nureyev gave me a look that told me he genuinely didn’t know who this person was. Maybe if he really did destroy her life and didn’t remember, maybe she was right to come after him. I just really wish he hadn’t of got me caught up in it as well.

“You’re not the only one that doesn’t go by their name anymore, Peter. Once I was Madame Rossignol, but now?” She laughed uncomfortably. “Now I’m nothing, because of what you did.”

“Who?” I mouthed at Nureyev.

He shrugged.

I watched his face as he tried to connect a voice and a name to a face, a place, an event. But I didn’t see a moment of realisation.

“Hi Rossignol,” I broke the silence, “I’m sorry about this but he hasn’t really told me much about his past. Who are you, exactly?”

I looked at Nureyev as he mouthed ‘thank you’ at me.

“Really? You didn’t tell him?” She sounded a little insulted. “You didn’t tell him that, twenty years ago, you were going to crash a floating city into the ground below? That you were going to destroy an entire planet?” 

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Brahma. She must have been there. I combed through my memories of what I saw. Looking for her name, her voice. Until I found it. The official who had spoken with them. Peter had gotten the password they needed off of her.

“Don’t be ridiculous, that wouldn’t have destroyed the planet.” Nureyev must have finally remembered her too. “I would have been doing it a favour.”

“You call destroying the capital city of your home planet a favour?”

“In this particular example? Yes.”

“I lost my job thanks to you, that was everything to me!”

“Hey!” I yelled as the two of them started to bicker. “Can we just go back to hearing your evil plan?”

“Well, I don’t really need much of a plan from here, do I? I got you to come all the way out here because you thought I was going to frame you. Now you’re about to get arrested for breaking in here and thanks to that little arrest you got on Mars all those months ago, the police are going to be keeping a very close eye on you this time. I doubt that they’ll let you escape again. And once they look you up and find out about everything else you’ve done… I think by the time you get out of prison, I might have forgiven you for everything you’ve done. Or maybe not.” She chuckled again, far too proud of herself. “Oh, and Juno?”

“Yeah?” I had been really hoping that she’d forgotten I was there.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I did I little bit of research, and I found out that you were a detective. I guess I did a bit of detective work myself.” She laughed. I rolled my eyes. She cleared her throat. “Well, as an apology for what’s about to happen to you—because you’re probably going to spend the rest of your life in prison for being associated with Peter Nureyev—I thought I would let you ask some questions. Just so you don’t go to prison wondering how I managed to track Peter down, or organise all of this, or anything else you might want to know.”

I don’t get many moments like this, no-one in this line of work does. It’s not every day where the person you’re questioning will just answer everything. This was my chance.

“Where are the speakers?” Nureyev just stared at me in confusion, eventually managing to mouth the word ‘what’ at me.

“Excuse me?” Rossignol managed to say, unsure of what to make of the question.

“The speakers? The ones you’re using to make us listen to you?” No response. “Where are they because Nureyev told me that electronics won’t work in this room, but the speakers work fine so I want to know what’s up with that.”

“Juno, what are you doing?” Nureyev hissed at me.

“If the speakers can’t be in the room they must be just outside it, playing through whatever it is that is stopping our comms from working, right?" I whispered. “Since we can hear her perfectly, whatever wall the speakers are playing through must be pretty thin. So we might be able to break through it and get somewhere that our comms will work, and we can call for help.” He nodded, slowly.

“Gentlemen,” Rossignol interjected, “you do know that I can also hear you perfectly, right?”

“I kinda assumed so,” Nureyev starting searching for the source of her voice, “so what’s the answer?”

“Nice try detective,” I watched Nureyev pull out his knife and cut away at the carpet. It had only taken him seconds to find the speaker after I had been searching for the entire conversation. Because of course it did. “But even if you can call someone, who’s going to be able to help you?”

I stopped, maybe she had a point. Who could I actually call? I was so used to just calling Rita when I ran into trouble I didn’t even realise she couldn’t help here. The door had to be opened manually, and there was no way she could get here in time, even if she could manage to sneak past security. There weren’t many other people I could ask for help. Anyone I could call either can’t help me or they can help me but would put me in debt for the rest of my life. And also probably several lives after that. 

“I can call Captain Khan.” I really hoped I wouldn’t have to, that wouldn’t be a fun call. “You know, the cop you’ve got out there on your dancefloor.”

“Calling a cop is a strange way to avoid being arrested, detective. That’s their job. I see why you didn’t last long as captain.” She was still laughing.

“I figured I could just tell him that you kidnapped us and locked us in this vault.” She stopped laughing. I held up my injured hand, then lowered again when I remembered that there were no cameras. “I even have a nice burn that Khan knows I didn’t have an hour ago to show that you assaulted me.”

“You forget,” Rossignol drew out each syllable, every word, every sound was deliberate, chosen. “I have audio of you two talking about holding the door open, that doesn’t sound like something a prisoner would say.” She started to speed up, sounding more confident the more she spoke. “I could always just show him this recording.”

“The same recording where you admit that you blackmailed Nureyev into coming here.” I looked over at him as I said that. He had ripped away at most of the carpet and was facing a slab of concrete. The plasma part of his plasma knife wasn’t working so he had no chance of getting through it, regardless of how thin it was. We needed time to think of another plan, which meant that I had to keep Rossignol talking. “You’re all out of luck, Khan is probably the only cop in the city who actually cares enough to check the entire recording, not just the fifteen seconds you want him to hear.” She huffed. “And if I need to, I can always tell him about your supply closet filled with illegal weapons.” Nureyev looked up for a moment, I guess he really didn’t know what was in that room before he made me hide in it.

“I... don’t see why that would... help you,” she was fumbling over her words now. I didn’t care as long as she just kept talking. “All of those are perfectly legal and—”

“Nope, don’t even try that with me. Most of that stuff is so dangerous even the Hyperion government thought it was overkill. Most of it is basically impossible to get if not outright banned.”

She coughed again. “Goodbye Pete, Juno, I hope you enjoy spending the rest of your lives in prison.” The sound of static filled the air for a second before being abruptly cut off, leaving the two of us in silence again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll admit that nureyev not recognising the voice might just be me projecting because i always had to bluff my way through phone calls when i was younger because i never knew who i was talking to because i can't recognise people's voices over the phone apparently :(


	7. Chapter 7

“So… did I win that argument or…?” I muttered. Nureyev sat against the wall and closed his eyes.

“Any other ideas, detective?” He asked.

“Not unless you count getting arrested.” He smiled and opened his eyes to look at me.

“I’m sorry, Juno.”

I sighed. “Don’t be, this isn’t your fault, she knew exactly how to bring you here.”

“It was still my decision to come here,” he looked away, “and to drag you into it.”

“Nurey…” His name caught in my throat, he looked back at me, lazily. “Peter,” I had his full attention now, “I’m sorry, for leaving,” I clarified. 

Before he could respond, we heard a shout from the other side of the door. I couldn’t tell who it was or what was said, but I had a pretty good guess.

“And I’m sorry for not apologising until right before we get separated again.” He stood up and walked towards me. I felt his hand on my cheek, not too warm, not too cold, perfect, like him. I couldn’t stop myself, or maybe I didn’t want to. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer as I stood up on my toes. I closed my eye and leaned in. I didn’t realise how much I missed that kiss. I’d thought about it, in the months since I’d last seen him, and my memories of it were incredible, but somehow, the reality was better. His hands dropped from my cheek, and I felt a tugging at my dress as he pulled me even closer. I raised my uninjured hand and pushed it through his hair. In that moment, I forgot where we were, why we were here, none of it seemed to matter. That moment would last forever.

“You two picked the weirdest place to do… that.” A gruff voice interrupted us. We separated, and I spent a few more seconds just staring at Peter, wondering how I could have ever given that up, before I turned to the source of the voice: Captain Omar Khan, of the HCPD.

“We got lost—” I tried.

“Shut it Steel,” he glared at me, “how many chances do I have to give you? All you had to do, was not steal a priceless artifact, was that so hard? I do it every day.”

“Captain, technically we didn’t steal anything,” Peter tried to argue.

“And you,” Khan turned to face him, “you know, I don’t trust anyone Steel hangs around with, let alone his husband.”

“Hey!” But Khan didn’t even turn to look at me.

“So I had someone look into that name you gave me, and do you know what I found?”

“My marriage certificate?” He guessed, innocently, refusing to meet my eye.

“Yeah, and that’s it.” Peter was looking away from Khan, and me. “Nothing to prove you really exist, just a marriage certificate between you two.”

“You actually got us married!” I yelled at him.

“I needed a marriage certificate to get you in here as my husband,” he met my eye, “don’t give me that look. It doesn’t have your actual name on it.”

“No, just the fake name you used to get him in here,” Khan turned to face me, “you don’t look like a Taavi Varro.” His eyes flickered between the two of us. “So I’m guessing you two aren’t actually married, are you?”

“That’s some real top-notch detective work there Khan, no wonder the Hyperion crime rate is so low.” 

“Hey,” his eyes settled on me, “you know better than anyone that the reasons for our high crime are much more complicated than that.”

“Excuse me,” Peter interrupted, “I much as I love this discussion, could we get this arrest over with?”

“Why, you got somewhere to be?” Khan asked as he pulled out his handcuff.

“Prison, apparently,” Peter said, cheerfully, as Khan placed the handcuffs on his wrists.

“You’re joking, right?” I coughed in disbelief as Khan walked towards me. 

“Not at all Juno, we have to respect the law.” Peter was joking, right? It was two against one, and the one was Khan. Why was he bothering with this?

“Jeez, Steel,” I turned to face Khan, “what the hell happened to your hand?” I resisted the urge to look down at it. It wasn’t going to be pretty, and I didn’t want to know.

“I brushed against a stove.” Khan was ignoring me.

“I can’t handcuff that. How are you not screaming in pain? What’s wrong with you?”

“I would answer that last question, but by the time I finished, the person who trapped us in here would have gotten away.”

Khan settled for just grabbing my uninjured arm and dragging me with him as he pulled Peter behind us. We were dragged back through the halls we had snuck through and through the door to the main party. Heads turned as a Hyperion cop lead two guests through the dancefloor, past the bar, and towards the exit.

“Is there a problem officer?” Khan turned towards Rossignol’s voice. She looked old, even once you factor in the twenty years since Peter had seen her. Apparently, revenge-obsessed lunatics don’t age well. 

“No problem, Ma’am,” Khan shifted uncomfortably, “I just caught these two in your vault, right where that tip I got said they would be. Thanks for giving me the access code.”

“Of course, I would do anything to help the law enforcement of this great city. I actually used to be involved in stopping criminals myself. Methods of dealing with them just seconds after the crime was actually committed.”

“Well, we might have to look into those methods in Hyperion.” Peter stiffened at the suggestion, and I saw Khan’s grip on Peter’s arm tighten as he tried to move towards Rossignol. Khan smiled, clearing wanting this conversation to be over.

“I’d be happy to share my secrets, officer. I was just about to go to my office, I’d be happy to speak with you in there” her eyes flicked between me and Peter, “but maybe after you do something about these two.”

“Sure thing, ma’am.” Khan pulled us both away from her. She smiled and waved at Peter before turning away and laughing. I tensed, half expecting Peter to break Khan’s grip and attack her. But he didn’t. He let himself be led away from her.

I stumbled as Khan took us outside. He grunted as caught me. The guards at the door stared at us but Khan quickly pulled us around the corner, out of their sight.

“Aren’t you going to help him?” Peter nodded in my direction.

“We’ll take him to the hospital, later,” Khan grumbled, “right now I’m more worried about arresting him.” Khan took us to the parking lot. It was almost empty except for his police car and the car we came in.

“Look at his hand.” I didn’t look at my hand. “Can’t you at least give him something for the pain?” Honestly, I didn’t even feel it. Sure, it hurt when the case first burnt me, but pretty soon it faded away. Now that I think about it, that probably wasn’t good.

“Fine,” he shoved Peter into the back of the car and closed the door before making me sit on the ground. He stared at me, “but I’m only doing this so your not-husband doesn’t badger me about it the whole drive to the station.”

“You’re too kind.” I leaned my back against the car as Khan grabbed a first aid kit.

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” he muttered as he searched through the kit, “seriously don’t tell anyone, I’m really not meant to do this.”

“I know,” I smiled, “I’ve broken that rule too.” Khan almost smiled at me as he got to work. One of the few benefits of the war was the developments in burn treatment. At one point, both sides went through a phase where they basically tried to burn the other side alive. The people in charge invested a lot of money looking for ways to help people recover from third-degree burns. The faster they recovered, the faster they could go back to fighting. Eventually, they came up with a cream and specially designed bandages that could heal almost any burn in a few hours. It wasn’t really available to civilians, thanks to some kids who set themselves on fire to see what it would feel like, the government was worried that the ability to almost immediately heal after a burn would just encourage us to start more fires. 

He finished wrapping my arm and pulled me to my feet. He stared at Peter. “Happy?”

“Incredibly,” he grinned back, “are you going to arrest us now?”

“Yeah—” As Khan began to open the door, Peter kicked it from the other side, knocking both me and Khan backwards. “What the—” Peter grabbed his arm and handcuffed him using the same pair that Khan had placed on him a few minutes ago. He threw Khan into the back of his police car.

“Sorry about that,” he said as he helped me to my feet. 

“Wait a second, I know you,” Khan stared at Peter, “you’re the guy we picked up from Steel’s apartment ages ago. The one that got away.” He looked at me. “Really Steel, you go from calling the cops on this guy to helping him in the space of a year? What is wrong with you?” He was banging against his car door now, but I still ignored him.

“Took you long enough,” I said to Peter as he walked over to me and unlocked my cuffs with a key he must have stolen off of Khan when he wasn’t looking.

“I had to make sure that your burn was okay, I know that the stuff they give out to police officers here is far better than what they use in hospitals.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, but he was already walking off. “Nureyev, Nureyev” I whispered as I followed him, “what are you doing?” He walked towards the back of the building, I vaguely remembered from the floor plans that there was a back entrance for workers. He waited at the corner of the building and held an arm out to stop me.

“This is plan B,” he explained. He poked his head around the corner, he would have had a perfect view of the unguarded back door. He turned back to look at me. “You don’t have to come, you’ve done enough.” He looked away. “And I doubt you’ll enjoy this next part.”

“I haven’t enjoyed myself all night,” I shrugged, “what’s a few more minutes.” He smiled at me before looking back around the corner.

“We can’t walk straight in, there are too many people on the other side of that door, we’d be noticed immediately. So we have to wait for somebody to come out, and borrow their clothes for a bit.”

“You’re right Nureyev, I don’t like that.” I crossed my arms.

“What, that?” He stared back at me. “That wasn’t the part I was referring to.”

“Great, just great.”

“You’re more than welcome to wait out here.” He sounded too hopeful when he said that.

“I think I’ll come.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as he went back to looking at the back door, waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chanting* Khan! Khan! Khan!


	8. Chapter 8

After several minutes of waiting, Peter snuck around the corner. I poked my head out to see an open door with two figures standing near it, hoisting a giant bag of rubbish into one of the bins by the door. The sound of glass that rang out every time they moved it masked the sound of Peter’s footsteps as he got closer, closer.

When they finally managed to throw out the bag, Peter pounced. He shoved one of them against the bin before knocking them off their feet. He put the other one in a hold, his arms around their neck. I ran towards them, not sure if I was going to help Peter or the underpaid workers who probably didn’t even know that their boss was a maniac and who almost definitely didn’t deserve this. Before I got there, Peter placed the one he was holding on the ground, they didn’t get back up. But the other one did. They looked at Peter and looked at the body on the ground and did the sensible thing. They ran towards the door, a yell beginning to form in their throat before Peter cut them off. Once again, pulling them into a hold. They were still awake when I finally got there. They looked at me, their eyes wide from fear. 

“Nureyev, what are—” But he was already placing them on the ground. Their body twitched for a moment but they didn’t get back up. “What did you do?” I hissed, barely able to stop myself from yelling.

“They’ll be fine, but they should probably go to a hospital after this.” He stopped that train of thought when he saw my face. I glared at him, confused but still furious. “Don’t worry, they’re just unconscious.” He gestured towards the one he had just choked out while walking towards the other body. “Grab their clothes, they should be your size.”

“How do you know if—” But I stopped myself, they were. “Nureyev, how are these exactly my size?” 

“I guess I’m just lucky.” He looked too proud of himself, but in fairness, he usually did. 

We got changed, taking their black shirts and pants. At least Peter had the decency to leave them with our jackets, as an apology for knocking them out and stealing from them. He threw everything else into a plastic bag he had procured and he hid it behind the bins. We would come back for them if we had time. 

We went through the door and found ourselves in a long hallway with the occasional door. A steady stream of workers in the same black clothes as us walked up and down it and we tried to stay out of their way. We walked until Peter found the door he was looking for. He opened it and pushed me through. It led to a small room with staff equipment in it. He grabbed a handheld radio and a clipboard. 

“Let me guess,” I watched him do a quick search of the room, “the plan is that I be quiet and let you do all the talking?”

“You do have a reputation for being a terrible liar.” He grabbed a sheet of paper off the desk and attached it to his clipboard. “If anyone asks, you’re a trainee. You’re learning by watching me.”

“And what am I learning?”

“Event management,” he said, as though it should have been obvious. “It’s incredibly complicated to manage an auction as large as this. Just think about all of the people you have to order around, cleaner, chefs, security personnel”

I scoffed, “this isn’t going to work.”

“Not with that attitude.” He placed his hand on the door to open it. “Are you ready?” 

I nodded.

He opened the door and we stepped back out into the hallway. We started walking down it again. This time, instead of trying to stay out of the way and take up as little room as possible, Peter stood up straight and seemed to almost completely fill the hallway. The employees who hurried past us practically pressed themselves against the wall to get out of his way as he strutted down the hallway with an air of confidence that made you really not want to question him about anything.

We kept walking until Peter found a low ranking security guard. She must have been on their break because they were too busy flirting with a dishwasher to see us coming. 

“Who’s in charge of cleaning the offices tonight?” Peter asked, barely looking up from his clipboard. They looked up in surprise while their friend tried really hard to make himself invisible.

“Umm, Jerry, I think?” She mumbled.

“You think? What kind of guard are you if you don’t even know who’s working tonight?”

“It’s Jerry, it’s Jerry,” she said as they looked around panicked. “Umm, who are you?”

“Who am I?” Peter looked up from his clipboard. He took a step towards her. Even though they were an inch taller than him, he still managed to intimidate them enough to step back. The guy she was with took that as his cue to leave. He scampered down the hallway, back towards the kitchen. “I’m the one your boss brought in to clean up this mess of auction. A mess that your security team contributed to when you let a couple of thieves break into one of the most secure vaults in the city.” She took another step back.

“That wasn’t—”

“And you should know that, unless you weren’t been paying attention when the security team was briefed about it. Maybe I should tell your boss that you don’t even pay attention to essential security announcements.” He stopped and motioned towards their earpiece, which wasn’t in their ear but was instead hanging down her chest. “Now, because whoever planned this was utterly incompetent, I don’t have a list of staff which is why I am asking you. So,” he cleared his throat, “who is head of security?” 

“Chadwick?”

“And big is the security team tonight?”

“Umm, seven, wait, eight including me.”

“Hmm,” he stared at his clipboard again, “please return to work.”

“Yessir.” They ran off.

We kept walking. Eventually, Peter stopped outside of two doors that were next to each other and pulled out the radio. “Chadwick, three guests have snuck into the offices, towards section three. Doing you mind sending a few people down there to get them out? Over.”

“I’m not seeing anyone on the cameras. Over.” The radio crackled.

“Then your cameras mustn’t be very good. How many people have managed to sneak past them tonight? Just get these drunk socialites out of there. Over.”

“Wilco, out.” Peter adjusted his radio after Chadwick stopped talking.

“Jerry, can you hear me?” He asked his radio.

“Yup, I mean, I can hear you.” A soft voice came out of the speaker. 

“A few people just broke into the offices, near section three. Don’t worry, they’re harmless. But do you mind going over there to wait for security to arrive? One of them threw up and I need you to clean it up after they’re removed.”

“Oh,” she sounded uncertain, “okay. Are you sure? What if they’re dangerous?”

“I promise you, they won’t be. And, between the two of us, I’ve seen how some of these guards act, and I don’t really trust them to actually get rid of these people. Can you keep an eye on them?” As he spoke he opened one of the doors we were standing next to and pushed me into it. It was another supply closet. I opened my mouth to protest but he held out a finger to indicate that I shouldn’t talk.

“Umm, sure, okay, bye.” 

Peter followed me into the closet and closed the door behind him. 

“What’s the plan, Nureyev?” I was pressed up close to him in this small, dark closet. The only light came in from under the door. I knew I should step back, push myself against the shelves to put some distance between us. But a part of me had missed this, it had been a long time since I’d been this close to him. Even after what happened in that vault, I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I didn’t know if he was going to leave again after tonight.

“Rossignol said she was going to be in her office, I’m going to find her.” I couldn’t see his face, it was way too dark for that. I wouldn’t have made much of a difference if I could, if he could manage to keep the emotions out of his voice, to sound calm, I doubted his face would give me much more information. “I need to stop her.”

“How do you even know where her office is?” I’d seen those floor plans as well, and I’m pretty sure I would have remembered if there had been a giant red arrow pointing to one of the offices labelled ‘evil villain's office here’.

“It’s the biggest.” Before I could respond, I heard noises outside the door. Large heavy footsteps, followed by laughter and voices.

“... was yelling something about intruders in the offices. Yeah, they weren’t on the cameras and no-one saw them except for him, of course.” It must be the guards Peter had called.

“Typical, management just can’t let us do our jobs, can they?” I heard them open the door next to us, I’m guessing it led to the offices. I would have known that for sure if I’d memorised the building last night, but it was a long night, and it was a big building. It didn’t seem that important.

“Hey, why did you lead the guards into the same part of the building that we’re about to go into?” 

“I didn’t. I lead them to the other side of the offices, to make sure Jerry stays over there. It’ll take them ages to search that part of the building. And now we know that a least a quarter of the security team is distracted. Not watching the cameras. And the janitor is nowhere near us.” He opened the door, holding it open for me as I stepped out into the deserted hallway. We were nowhere near the kitchens or anywhere else you’d expect to see the other workers. Peter stood next to the door that the guards had just gone through. He pulled out a knife and indicated for me to pull out my blaster. I did.


	9. Chapter 9

Peter opened the open the door to the offices and I went through first. I scanned the room. A floor-to-ceiling glass barrier separated us from the actual offices. There was the occasional gap in the glass to allow access. On the other side of the glass, rows upon rows of cubicles filled a large room. Doors lined the walls, leading to larger and more private spaces. I searched my brain for any more information about the layout of this part of the building. Peter slipped through one of the gaps in the glass to enter this larger room. I vaguely remembered that the offices were divided into three sections, three spaces, all like the one I was looking at now. I guess they must have been slightly different, Peter had to have been basing his assumption that Rossignol would be in here on something, right?

We snuck through the large room, ducking behind cubicles in case one of the guards came back. The lights were on. If we were out in the open when the guards gave up their search of the other offices, we would be seen instantly.

I heard a sound behind us. I span around and prepared myself to point my blaster at whatever made it. I stayed there for a moment, searching the small part of the room I could see for anyone that had snuck up on us. Nothing. I turned back around. 

Peter was gone.

“Nureyev?” I whispered. There was no response. He couldn’t be caught, I reasoned. I would have heard something. He would have gotten my attention. He must have kept going, not realising that I had stopped. I listened for his footsteps, but, unsurprisingly, I didn’t hear anything. Master thieves aren’t known for their loud footsteps. I realised that I was going to have to search the offices until I found him. After all, he had to be in one of them—with Rossignol. 

I made my way over to the closest door. I opened it quietly. Nothing. Just an empty, dark room. I repeated this with the next door, and the next, and the next. Every time I opened another door, I would be filled with panic. What if this was the exact moment that those guards walked past? We knew that there was at least two of them. Even I wasn’t dumb enough to think I could beat two train security guards in a fight. No, I learnt that lesson.

I opened the next door. The light in this room was on. I snuck into the room, closing the door behind me and hoping that it was Peter and Rossignol and not some random person who happened to be working late that night.

I turned around. I was in the right room. Rossignol was sitting at her desk. Peter was leaning over her, holding a knife to her throat. His face was close to her and he was saying something so quietly that I couldn’t hear him even though I was only a few metres away. He didn’t acknowledge me as I entered. Maybe he didn’t notice. Rossignol did. She looked over at me and smiled.

“Ah, Juno,” she said as Peter pressed the knife harder against her throat, “it’s lovely to meet you. Do you mind telling your partner to stop, now?”

“I’m not going to fall for that,” Peter hissed.

“Hey,” his head jerked to look at me. I got a brief glimpse at the rage that Rossignol must have been seeing before it was replaced with something… embarrassment, maybe? “Sorry, I got lost.” I looked between him and Rossignol. “So… what are you doing?”

“Juno, you don’t have to be here.” Peter looked away from me.

“I really think I do.” My grip on my blaster tightened and my breathing quickened. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to have to use that blaster on Rossignol or Peter. “What are you doing?”

“There are things I need to know, Juno.” That wasn’t much of an answer.

“Like?”

“Like how she found me.” He turned back to Rossignol, waiting for a response.

She looked at me again, and laughed. “After you left Brahma, crime broke out across the Outer Rim. A series of thefts, all of them were high profile targets that should have been impossible to break into. I spent ages trying to work out the pattern, I thought you were repeating what you did on Brahma. By the time I realised that you were just taking things that were valuable, you’d already moved on. I tried to follow you, but I had no idea where to start. Every now and then I’d hear about a crime that I thought might be you, but by the time I got there to investigate, you had vanished again. I spent twenty years waiting for you to make a mistake. And then you did.

“You robbed a crime family, I think their name was Kanagawa, and they wanted revenge. They had a video of your face. You with some detective.” She nodded in my direction. “It took me months to learn that they were trying to find you, so I didn’t get to Hyperion until you’d disappeared again. But I got lucky. I found someone else who was looking for you. A man who couldn’t speak. But he had photos of you two and he knew your names. He said—or he wrote I guess—that everyone who he used to work with was dying. Someone was killing them. He thought it was you, so he was trying to find you. He didn’t know where you were or anything else that was useful, but I got the name of your err…” 

Peter must have pressed the knife harder against her throat because a few drops of blood appeared. I didn’t want to look at that, and I definitely didn’t want to look at Peter right now, so I made a show of searching the room. I looked through the papers on her desk as she continued.

“Your friend... “ I could feel her gaze on me, trying to work out something. What I was doing? What me and Peter’s relationship was? Whether or not I was going to try and stop him? I didn’t know what she was looking for, but I doubted that she got the answers to any of her questions because I probably didn’t know them myself. “Juno.” I heard her squeak, Peter must have pressed the knife closer again. I knew I should stop him. If he wasn’t careful he was going to kill her. Maybe that was what he wanted.

“I watched him for months, waiting, and you never came back.” My eye flicked up to look at Peter, almost involuntarily, he moved the knife so that it was no longer touching her skin. She breathed out, a deep sigh of relief. “I waited for months, until one day he disappeared, I assumed you had something to do with that.” Peter looked at me in confusion. I tried to remember what she could be referring to. Maybe the election?

Before I could ask her what she meant, she kept going. “I realised I wasn’t going to catch you like that, so I took a risk, a gamble.” Her eyes lit up like a gambler who’s just hit the jackpot. “I knew he was a detective, so I left a message for him to find.”

“What message?” I asked.

Peter turned his plasma knife off and stepped away from Rossignol. He pinched the bridge of his nose and started pacing that room. She straightened up; I raised my blaster to where she could see it. Between my missing eye and my dominant hand being cocooned in so many bandages I would struggle to hold a mug let alone pull a trigger, I wouldn’t exactly be the greatest sharpshooter in the world. But she was a metre away from me, I was pretty sure I could hit her from here.

“Don’t be upset,’ he eventually mumbled behind me.

“That’s usually what people say right before I get upset.”

“After the Kanagawa incident,” he took a deep breath, “I started to… keep an eye on your comms activity—”

“You what?!” I lowered the blaster and span to face him.

“I know, I know,” he held his hands up, defensively, “not my finest moment. But I didn’t read any of your messages, I was just making sure that none of them was from a Kanagawa.”

“That’s not much better.”

“I know,” he closed his eyes, “and I’m sorry. But one day you stopped using your comms. I waited for months before I assumed the worst and checked. I went to your office, you weren’t there. But I searched it anyway. That was where I found the message. Hidden in one of your drawers was a note. It was a written in…” he smiled and laughed to himself, “... I don’t know how I didn’t work out that it had something to do with Brahma…” he trailed off.

“Nureyev?” We didn’t have much time.

“Right,” he snapped to attention, “I translated the note—that wasn’t hard. It was my name and an address. I went to the address, that was where I found that note. And then I went to you.”

“I waited for so long for you to show up, I had to keep changing the events I was going to use. It was so annoying,” Rossignol said, reminding us that she was there. I turned back towards her, holding my blaster in her view.

“We are going to talk about that later. But right now, what about her?” I asked, not wanting to know.

“She knows my name,” Peter said as he walked towards her, “I don’t know what else I can do.” He turned his plasma knife back on.

“No,” I stepped between them, “you can’t just kill her.” I looked back at her. She was leaning back, away from us. She would have looked calm if not for the fact her hands were gripping the armrests so tightly they had turned white. “You’ve already threatened her, just tell her to leave us alone.”

“She’s spent twenty years looking for me, and you think she’s going stop now? She already knew what I’d done, what I’m capable of, and it didn’t stop her. There’s only one way I can stop her,” he pleaded with me.

“I can’t watch you kill her.”

He stepped towards me and wrapped his spare arm around me, the one without the potential murder weapon in it. He put his mouth close to my ear. Close enough that he could say something that only I could hear.

“You don’t have to.”

I didn’t move as he pulled away. I couldn’t bring myself to turn to look at Rossignol as Peter got closer. I never liked looking at murder scenes, let alone this one. But I could still hear it. The gentle hum of his plasma knife, the soft gasp as Rossignol drew her final breath, and the sound Peter’s knife made as sliced through her tender skin. 

Then it was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who's ready for murder!


	10. Chapter 10

“Are you ready to go?” Peter asked from behind me.

“Yeah,” I said, not turning to look at him, or Rossignol. We walked towards the door. Peter gave one last glance towards the desk before he opened the door. I didn’t. We stepped through and closed the door behind us.

“Hey, you!” I froze at the sound of someone yelling from the other side of the room. They must be near the exit. That’s probably not good.

“Can we help you?” Peter asked, innocently. I turned around to see who was there. Three security guards. They must have been the ones Peter had sent to the other end of the office. I guess they were on their way back.

“Yeah, who are you?” A different guard answered. She was giant, a behemoth, easily a foot taller than Peter. She looked big enough that she could accidentally step on me the same way I could step on an ant. That wasn’t a comforting thought. This voice sounded more familiar, it must have been one of the ones we heard outside.

“Management.” They stepped closer towards us. I realised my blaster was still in my hand, I tried to hide it behind my back

“Really? Are you same management that sent us on a wild goose chase?” The third guy answered. He was short, really short, shorter than me. But even though his height wasn’t that intimidating, just about everything else about him was. He clearly had a thing for spikes. He must have spent a small fortune on the number of body modifications needed to cover his arms and back in spikes. I kinda hoped he didn’t have a kid because I couldn’t imagine that those made getting picked up by your dad a particularly painless experience. And I really didn’t want to know what those felt like firsthand.

“Or are you the guy that Dana ran into out in the hall? The guy that we apparently work for even though no-one has heard of you.” It was the first speaker again. I got a decent look at zir this time. Compared to the other two, ze looked normal. Average height, about as muscular as you would expect a highly paid guard to be. The only thing about zir that caught your eye was zir cobalt blue hair. 

“What were you doing in the boss’s office?” The Urchin asked. The three of them began to spread out as they advanced towards us.

“Just talking, about the security in this place,” Peter said while I took a small step back so I could hide my blaster between me and the wall. One of them, Cobalt, was nearly at an angle where ze would be able to see it and I’m pretty sure that that would be the catalyst for a fight. A fight I wasn’t entirely that sure we could win.

“Oh really,” the Behemoth didn’t look convinced, “why don’t we ask her?” She started to move towards us even faster.

“I wouldn’t,” Peter was still trying to talk them down. I couldn’t blame him, the only reason that I hadn’t said anything to them was because the less I spoke, the more likely it was that we would avoid this fight. “She’s in a pretty bad mood, I really wouldn’t bother her.”

“It that a blaster?!” Damn, Cobalt saw it. 

Before anyone else could react I pointed my blaster at zir and made three shots: the first two missed completely—I still wasn't used to shooting with one eye and using my other hand wasn't helping—and the third grazed zir shoulder. Ze yelped in pain and stepped backwards. I turned back to the other two as they ran towards us. 

Peter pulled out his knife and tried to attack Urchin, but he was ready for it. He dodged Peter’s stab and tried to charge at Peter with his shoulder, trying to impale him. Peter moved to the side, out of the way, but Urchin kicked Peter’s legs while he was off-balance. Knocking him to the floor. Peter managed to kick Urchin’s legs out from under him. I saw him pull out his knife.

Then, I saw the Behemoth running towards me. I raised my gun and fired. I hit her square in the middle of her chest. But she didn’t go down. Too late, I tried to jump out of her way but she still managed to punch me in the face, and then the gut. I got knocked backwards, into a desk. She stopped for a moment, as I was gasping for air. I raised my blaster and fired another shot. And another. And another. On the fourth shot, she went down. 

I turned back to Peter and Urchin. They were standing again. But they were moving away from me as Peter moved out of the way of Urchin’s spikes and Urchin moved out the way of Peter’s knife. I wanted to take a shot, but they were too close together. In the state I was in, I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t hit Peter. 

A strong force hit me from behind, sending me sprawling across the room and knocking my blaster out of my hand. I looked up. Cobalt was standing over me. Damn, I thought the shoulder injury would encourage zir to stay out of the fight. Ze picked me up and slammed me against the glass panel that separated us from the exit. Ze placed zir forearm against my throat. I had to turn my head to the side to still be able to breathe. I saw my blaster, lying under a desk just a few metres away from me. But I had no way of getting to it. I felt a sharp pain in my stomach as Cobalt hit me. I could hear and feel at least one of my ribs crack. 

“Hey!” Cobalt stopped her second punch and we both turned towards the sound of Peter’s voice. He was holding his knife, getting ready to throw it. He had his back to Urchin—who was on the ground with a massive gash along his chest—so he didn’t see him get to his feet.

I tried to yell, to warn him, but Cobalt’s arm was still pressed against my throat. I couldn’t make a sound. He moved his arm to throw the knife, just as Urchin grabbed his arm. 

Peter yelled in pain as some of Urchin’s spikes went through his arm. His arm jerk as he threw the knife, sending it away from me and Cobalt. In one fluid motion, Peter turned, grabbed another knife from his pocket and sliced Urchin with it. Cobalt let go of me and ran for Peter. As I hit the ground, I scrambled for my blaster, trying to get as far away from the glass divider as I could. When Peter’s knife missed us, it hit the divider. It didn’t shatter it completely, but there were cracks across the entire pane. If anything else was thrown against it, the entire thing would shatter. 

I reached my gun and aimed it at Peter and Cobalt. Again, they were too close. I couldn’t risk it. Cobalt had managed to grab Peter, knocking his knife out of his hand and pinning his arms to his side. Peter struggled against zir, pushing the two of them backwards, towards the glass. Before he could escape, Cobalt threw him through the pane.

It shattered.

Now that Peter was out of the way, I had a clear shot at Cobalt, I pointed my blaster at zir and fired. Eventually, I managed to hit zir, sending zir falling to the ground. 

I lowered my gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh no... i wonder if petes okay... how could someone do something like that...


	11. Chapter 11

I wanted to lay there, to catch my breath. But I couldn’t. Peter was on the ground, surrounded by the remains of the shattered wall of glass. 

I crawled over to him, slowly. Every breath was painful. I instinctively raised my hand to my injured chest but that only made it worse.

“Peter,” I coughed as I got closer. I reached out to touch him. He raised his hand to intercept mine. He was covered in cuts. Both from his fight with Urchin and being thrown through a window. But it could have been worse. I looked at the glass around us. It had broken into small chunks, no giant shards to get impaled on. “You’re lucky.”

“How so?” Peter asked as he tried to stand. I slid under his arm to support his weight, sending another sharp pain through my ribs. I hissed. Peter pushed my arm away. 

“Safety glass,” I said, gesturing and the glass on the floor, trying to distract myself, “won’t cut you to pieces.”

“Lucky me,” he walked over to the wall, away from the debris and sat down, leaning against it.

I staggered over to the three guards, checking their pulses. Cobalt and the Behemoth were fine, just unconscious. Urchin was awake, rolling on the floor in pain, holding his hands over two deep cuts in his chest. Thanks to the heat from Peter’s plasma knife, they were cauterised instantly. But they definitely hurt like hell. 

“Uhh, sorry,” I stood there awkwardly as he just glared at me, “We’ll call an ambulance or something.” I backed away. Hoping he wouldn’t say anything.

I sat down next to Peter, who was pulling chunks of glass out of his arms. I leaned over to help him.

“So what now?”

“We escape.” 

“How?” Neither of us were in any condition to make a smooth getaway.

“Walk down the same hallway we went through earlier and hope that the other five guards don’t notice.”

“Seriously?” I stopped what I was doing and just glared at him. He held my gaze for a moment, and then a smile spread across his face and he started feeling through his pockets.

“Well,” he pulled a small, black box out, “there’s a bit more to it than that.” I stared at the box. It didn’t look like much. It was just a metal box with a red light and a button on top. I waited for him to continue. “This will knock out all the power in the building,” he explained, “cameras, lights, all of it. That hallway out there will be pitch black, no-one will see us. We’ll have about thirty seconds before the backup generator starts to run. Almost immediately after that, the lights will come back on. About a minute after that, the cameras will be back. Can you manage it?” He smiled again, this time it was a challenge.

“Probably not,” I shrugged, “but we won’t know until we try.” 

We picked the rest of the glass out of Peter and he helped me get to my feet. I tried to walk on my own. I could manage it, barely. But I had to admit that I had a better chance of getting out of here in time if I let Peter help me. He put one of my arms over his shoulder and wrapped one of his arms around my waist, and helped me over to the door.

“We only have one chance to do this before things get…” he gave one last glance around the room, “messy. Are you ready?” 

“Sure, why not?”

I used my free hand to pull the door open. We got a quick look down the (thankfully) empty hallway before Peter pushed the button. The lights went out and we started to run. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that we started to limp. I hated being in the dark like this, even though I knew that there was nothing in this hallway, I couldn’t help but feel as though someone was lurking in the dark, ready to jump out at us.

I heard screaming, it must have been coming from the party. A bunch of rich people who probably thought that they were about to be robbed, completely unaware that the master thief was actually making his getaway.

The lights came back on. I looked back. We were about a quarter of the way there. But now that the lights were on, we moved faster. Getting closer and closer towards the exit. Peter shoved the door open and we ran through.

When we got outside, Peter slipped out from underneath me. I nearly fell to the ground at the unexpected lack of support. Before I could ask what he was doing, he was back. He dragged me towards the car. We passed Khan, still trapped in his police car, yelling at us and banging on the windows. He’d be fine.

Peter unlocked the car, scooped me up and put me in the passenger seat. I couldn’t even bring myself to be annoyed at that. It was probably faster than letting me try to climb in. He placed a bag in my lap. I opened it as he got in the car.

“You went back for our clothes?” I said, annoyed that he had bothered.

“Of course,” he pulled out of the park and sped towards the exit, “that dress looked beautiful on you.”

Within moments, we were out of the car park and on the roads, no alarms, no sirens. They must have been too busy with the power outage to notice our getaway. I breathed a sigh of relief. Even if it was just for a moment, we were safe. I leant my head against the window, watching the city lights stream past us. I closed my eyes, just for a second. I was so tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just kidding i would never hurt pete like that


	12. Chapter 12

I woke up in my apartment. Just like I did most days. I was sitting up, leaning against a pile of cushions, which was unusual. I could see my hand, the one that had gotten burnt. It looked fine. And I wasn’t in the clothes I was wearing last night. I was really confused. Did last night even happen? I twisted my body, to try and get out of bed, and yelled from the pain. Nope, that was real.

My bedroom door opened. Peter Nureyev stood in the doorway. That was also real. He ran over to me and forced me to sit back down. “Don’t move.” He walked back out of the room. Seriously? He was just leaving me here?

He came back a few seconds later with a bag of frozen peas. “I don’t know why you don’t have an ice pack, Juno. Surely with how often you get injured—”

“What do you think the bag of peas is for?” I pressed it against my ribs. I tried to stand again, this time I was ready for the jolt of pain as I moved. Peter tried to help me, but I shook him off. I’d done this before. I didn’t need his help now.

I walked out of my bedroom, into the living room, and was almost blinded by the light. The curtains in my room were closed, nothing was getting through. But this light? It must have been the middle of the day. “How long was I out?”

“About thirty-two hours.” 

“Huh,” I leaned against the kitchen counter, “that’s probably not good.” I looked around for a glass, I was so thirsty. “What happened, with Rossignol and the guards?” I had to ask, but I didn’t really want him to tell me the answer.

“The guards are all fine, I think the one I dealt with is still in hospital but the other two are perfectly healthy. They found Rossignol. They’re going through all of her files, trying to figure out who could have done this. I’ll admit, I am curious to see what the police will find. But I likely won’t get the chance.”

“What? Why?” I turned to face him.

“I have to leave, Juno.” He reached out and grabbed one of my hands. “I always have to leave.”

“No, you don’t.” I knew it was selfish. It was dangerous for him here. It always had been, but especially after last night. But I couldn’t lose him again, not after last time. He didn’t say anything. “You shouldn’t have killed her.”

“Juno, she knew my name.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t have done it.” He studied me.

“What was I supposed to do?” 

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I felt his eyes on me as I poured myself a glass of water.

“Why does it matter?” He leant against the counter, facing me. “How is this any different than you killing Miasma?”

“That was different, she was going to destroy Mars, she was going to kill you!” I couldn’t believe that he would compare the two.

“I’m sorry,” he must have realised that he’d gone too far. “But if Rossignol had her way, then my life would be over. I know it’s not as heroic, or quite as idiotic, as what you did, but can you honestly blame me?” I drank the glass of water, giving myself time to find the right words. I couldn’t avoid this question. And neither could he.

“Would you do the same to me?” He took a deep breath and walked away from me. He leaned against the windowsill and just stayed there. He didn’t move, he didn’t speak. I half expected him to open the window and climb through it. “If you thought I was going to tell someone your name, if you thought I was going to betray you, would you kill me?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“It’s a pretty simple question, Nureyev. Yes or no?” He looked out the window, up, towards the sky. Even with the sun and the dome blocking them out, it wasn’t hard to imagine the stars. The galaxy that I gave up my chance to see. He looked down, to the streets below, before he turned back and faced me.

“No.”

“How do I know if I can believe you?” He didn’t say anything. “After everything: the lying, the going through my things, the… lying. How can I trust you?”

“You don’t have to,” he stood up and grabbed his jacket, which was sitting on my couch. “Even if you don’t believe me, I’m telling the truth when I say I’ll leave you alone. No matter what.” He put his jacket on and glanced back at me. “I’m sorry, Juno.” He started to walk towards the door.

“Nureyev,” he reached for the door. “Nureyev!” I started to run for the door. I yelled as I felt another jolt of pain in my chest. He paused at the sound, but he didn’t look back. “Peter, you don’t have to leave.” He lowered his hand, and turned towards me. I didn’t know what to say. Should I apologise? What would I even be apologising for?” 

“I can’t stay,” he took a step away from the door.

“I know,” I smiled at him, “but you’re not about to leave a lady with a broken rib to fend for himself, are you?”

“That depends,” he smiled back, “is he going to complain the whole time and insist that he doesn’t need my assistance?” 

“Oh, yeah, definitely, he’s gonna be a real piece of work. He’s gonna make your life miserable and tell you to let him die in peace over and over again. But can I tell you a secret, Nureyev?” I took a slow step towards him. “He doesn’t really mean it… most of the time.”

“I suppose I could stay,” he said, slowly, “it would be easier to keep an eye on my cuts, make sure that they don’t scar and all of that.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. And maybe, after we’re both not dying, we can leave. We can explore the galaxy, together.”

He closed the remaining distance between us. I felt like I was drowning, and he was coming to save me. I just needed him near me, to hold me, and then I would be able to breathe again. He stopped about half a metre away from me.

“Is that what you want?”

“Yeah,” I looked up at him, “it is.”

He stepped forward and grabbed the collar of my shirt, pulling me up to his height. And then he kissed me. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he let go of my collar and I felt the weight of his arms around my waist. I kissed him back, and he held me even harder.

“Ow, too tight,” I pushed his arms away. “Ribs,” I explained, pointing at them to emphasise my point. He pulled away. 

“Sorry,” he suppressed a smile, badly.

“It’s fine,” I looked away from him. “Hey, Peter?”

“Hmm?” 

“No more lying this time.” I looked up. “Don’t hide anything from me.”

“Agreed,” he reached out and grabbed my hand, lacing his fingers in mine. He pulled me towards him for another, more gentle, kiss. “No secrets.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg it's finally done!!!!  
> i've never written anything longer than a few thousand words before so this was an experience  
> thank you so much to everyone who read this (especially everyone who left kudos and comments)  
> <3 <3 <3


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